Some people have Stockholm syndrome for Facebook.
“Yeah yeah, they are exploiting me, but they have a reason, they have families to raise, Mark needs to earn that billions of money to support the poor people in Africa… there are reasons….”
This problem
needs to be addressed more directly.
I've seen some reports that suggest using social media can have similar effects to drug use.
The difference is that, especially when Facebook started, nobody knew how dangerous it would become. In fact I'd be willing to argue it wasn't even that bad back in the late 2000s. But simply telling people "you need to get off of Facebook" isn't going to solve the problem, because addiction is a real issue.
For people unfortunate enough to be entrenched in Facebook, leaving Facebook might mean:
* becoming disconnected from many friends/relatives who simply prefer to stick to FB (an even harder sell during the pandemic, when social connection is so important)
* losing touch with current events in one's community (when that community largely uses Facebook to advertise events and such)
* possibly missing out on employment opportunities
* and many other issues...
For example, in my town, the only public forum for posting about a lost pet is on Facebook. I don't use Facebook. Therefore, if I lose a pet, I have to resort to putting in a note at the pound (and hoping someone turns the pet in) or doing the traditional act of stapling lost signs to trees (which people don't really read anyway, and in at least one case I heard of someone getting fined for it).
There's also a Neighborhood Watch group on Facebook, to report suspicious activity, localized warnings about climate, neighborhood events like garage sales, etc. Again, if I'm not on FB, I don't have access to it.
A bit less "serious", but there's also the Facebook marketplace. Friends will show me awesome things they got "from Facebook". I'd love to be able to participate in both buying and selling, but since I'm not an FB user, I can't.
I'm still choosing to stay off FB, but I am aware of how much I'm missing out on because of that choice. I'm relatively introverted and most of my friends use other means of communication alongside FB, but I'm still well aware of what's on FB that I'm missing out on because I hear about it from others often. Now imagine someone who
is already on FB and asking them to
give up those benefits - alongside the issue of social media addiction.
The only way I see a real change happening is if a
very, very major breach occurs at Facebook that has
direct effect on a huge percentage of their users. I'm not talking "your E-mail address got compromised" level breaches here. I'm talking "35% of US Facebook users now have fraudulent credit applications that they have to personally spend hours of their life addressing as a direct result of a breach at Facebook." Even small breaches that ruin a small number of people won't help, because the Stockholm effect and the "it won't happen to
me" effect will come into play. (When you hear about someone's house burning down, do you immediately run around to ensure your smoke detectors are working, look for loose wiring, etc? Or do you just think "wow, that's too bad, least it didn't happen to me?" and move on...)
